European Union (Notification of Withdrawal) Bill
Baroness Crawley Excerpts(7 years, 9 months ago)
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Baroness Crawley (Lab)
My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Wheatcroft, with whom I agree on many points. Making speeches is what we do, but this is certainly one speech I never wanted to have to make; not because I am still angry and upset that we have decided to leave the EU; not because I am a bad loser, as my leave friends might suggest; and not because I believe that leaving is the biggest mistake we have made as a country in modern times; but because we have prioritised issues of immigration—some valid, others definitely not—over the future strength of our economy; and because of the profoundly damaging effect that this decision will have on millions of vulnerable people in this country, possibly for decades to come.
Some 45 years of our country standing shoulder to shoulder with Europe, through good and bad times, have meant that our trade, our jobs, our aspirations for a cleaner world, our research and scientific activities, our rights at work, including our maternity rights, our safer goods and consumer protection, and our sense of security have become enmeshed with those of our fellow Europeans. In those 45 years, the UK has become immeasurably better off. That is why we joined Europe in the first place and, incidentally, why Mrs Thatcher was so keen to be godmother to the single market once we were in. Yet we are about to see those years of co-operation unravel as we go forward with the great divorce—what a great shame as we set out to unravel more than 7,000 pieces of legislation, statutory instruments, agency contracts and countless other decisions.
So we come to the decision of the Supreme Court of 24 January. The wording of the court’s judgment is quite stark and weighty. I will quote—briefly, your Lordships will be glad to know—what the court said:
“The 2016 referendum is of great political significance. However, its legal significance is determined by what Parliament included in the statute authorising it, and that statute simply provided for the referendum to be held without specifying the consequences. The change in the law required to implement the referendum’s outcome must be made in the only way permitted by the UK constitution, namely by legislation”.
Now we have the Supreme Court’s judgment, it is interesting to reflect that it would have been entirely possible for a majority of the electorate to have voted remain and for the Government subsequently to have brought forward legislation, as they are doing now, to trigger an Article 50 exit. Lewis Carroll himself could not have invented a better referendum: none will have prizes.
Everyone participating in this legislative exercise of the Bill’s Second Reading—and now that the Government have published the White Paper, which is not so much a starting pistol as a cry for help—must act according to his or her conscience as he or she answers this question: which course of action is best for our country in the light of the referendum result? For as they say in “Game of Thrones”, winter is coming. Inadvertently revealing her frayed nerves, the very first line of the Prime Minister’s introduction to the White Paper reads:
“We do not approach these negotiations expecting failure”.
The truth is, as noble Lords have said tonight, that nobody, including the Prime Minister, knows what to expect because the practical impacts of Brexit cannot be controlled by the UK alone. In addition, Brexit is now a joint venture between the Government and Parliament. Even with luck on our side, the mess can only get messier.
How did it come to pass that the Government, in trying to build a negotiating position, refused to affirm outright that, whatever happens, those EU nationals living here will have an automatic and inviolable right to stay? In effect, the Government are holding them hostage. In all humanity, it should have been our clear national position on the day after the referendum that there would be no question of altering the status of French, Polish, Spanish and other people living here. They are not bargaining chips. But Brexit-think loosens common sense and, I am afraid, sometimes common decency.
The Brexit Minister has listed the 12 pillars of our national position in the forthcoming negotiations—the 12 pillars of Hercules. I will try to sum one of them up: “Let’s leave the Common Market but then see if we can reinvent it under another name”. We are effectively saying to our European partners, “It’ll be OK if we leave one day and then come back the next wearing a new hat”.
Some people got euphoric about the resounding Article 50 vote in the House of Commons. Kenneth Wolstenholme used to say “They think it’s all over”. In fact, it has hardly begun and this match will be played over many years, in many stadiums, through many different competitions and with many changing team sheets and shifts in tactics. To those outside this House who say that the House of Lords has no right to amend the Bill, I say: “Stop threatening us and let us get on with our constitutional duty, the one we all try to carry out every day—to act and speak and vote responsibly, according to our consciences and in the best interests of the United Kingdom”. That is what we will do, my Lords.
G20 Summit
Baroness Crawley Excerpts(8 years, 2 months ago)
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Baroness Evans of Bowes Park
I certainly assure the noble Lord that we are fully engaging with the Governments of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland to ensure a UK-wide approach to our negotiation. As my noble friend Lord Bridges made clear in his Statement on Monday, we have reiterated our determination that there will be no return to the hard borders of the past.
Baroness Crawley (Lab)
My Lords, were there any discussions with our European partners during the summit at either ministerial or civil servant level about the unfortunate but significant rise in hate crime since the vote on 23 June?
Baroness Evans of Bowes Park
Certainly, we take this issue extremely seriously, which is why we have produced a new Hate Crime Action Plan. This is something of which we are extremely mindful. I believe the latest figures show that the situation is still unacceptable but the spike that was seen has now gone. However, I assure the noble Baroness that this matter is at the forefront of our mind and is certainly something that we all take very seriously in discussions with other colleagues globally. We will focus on it because, as I said, we want to ensure that we are seen to be, and remain, the outward-looking, global international country that we have always been.
Outcome of the European Union Referendum
Baroness Crawley Excerpts(8 years, 4 months ago)
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Baroness Crawley (Lab)
My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Balfe.
Speaking to a fellow Peer last week on the Lords Terrace, who I knew had a great interest in all things European, I said, “I suppose you’ve read Article 50”. He said, “Read it? I wrote it.” Only in the Lords.
A week is a long time in politics, as Harold Wilson once said, and two weeks is a lifetime. In that time, nearly all my adult certainties have dissolved around me. As a former MEP, like my noble friend Lord Cashman, representing Birmingham in the 1980s and 1990s, I wonder what it was all for. Were the last 40 years the high-water mark for our country’s environmental, social and workplace rights? As someone personally involved in the original EU maternity leave directive in 1992—one of its midwives, if you like—I am particularly angry that we are turning our back on such EU legislation, which has helped hundreds of thousands of British women each year, enabling them to enjoy substantial time off with their newborn babies and to get paid while they are on leave. They are entitled in law—that is, EU law transcribed into British law—to have their job back when their leave ends.
British Governments have not always been enthusiasts for EU workplace rights. In fact, they had to be dragged kicking and screaming even to abstain on the original maternity leave directive, as I recall. So what will future workplace rights look like for a Government now burdened by a slowing economy? Like so much else, we do not know. Will our major cities and conurbations see again the great surge of infrastructure projects and renovation that Birmingham and the West Midlands saw in the 1990s and 2000s—activities made possible by the partnering of EU funding with public and private investment, leading, as it did, to new road and rail infrastructure, the extension of the NEC, the new Symphony Hall, the indoor athletics arena and of course the complete restoration of the city’s 18th-century canal system? “More canals than Venice” was our boast—in a Brummie accent.
No, we will probably not see such partnership again, which is a pity because it was that surge in activity and the jobs that came with it that helped cities such as Birmingham recover from the recessions of the 1980s. It also brought new hope, new prestige and inward investment into that city from firms, many of them European, setting up their HQs there and using the EU rules of free movement of people, goods and services to do so: rules that we rejected on 23 June—indeed, which a majority of the voters of Birmingham and the West Midlands rejected on 23 June. Understanding the underlying causes of that rejection is a huge responsibility for those of us in political life as we move forward, listening ever more closely and acting on inequality and alienation.
The people have spoken and, as a democrat, I must accept the result. However, I am incandescent that such an important question as our membership of the EU, impacting, as it will, on our lives for many decades, was decided in such a simplistic, binary manner and that so many falsehoods and downright lies were allowed to become popular wisdom, leading to so much xenophobia in the campaign and giving a licence for it to continue beyond the campaign, with the police recording an alarming increase in race-hate incidents in the last 12 days.
Where do we go from here? I understand that Andrea Leadsom has called for Article 50 to be triggered as quickly as possible. This is a bit like Captain Smith telling the harbourmaster to let the “Titanic” sail from Southampton as quickly as possible. It is as if we have forgotten that we live in a globalised economy—an economy which may bring prosperity to us all in the UK but will also certainly bring some disruption and harm. We cannot deal with this global reality by declaring UDI for Milton Keynes—for that is precisely how so many global forces, such as China and the USA, will be interpreting Brexit. It will seem to them like an act of provincial suicide, cutting off our neighbours to spite our future and retreating into a cardboard fortress that will be of no help to any of those left inside. My belief continues to be that the EU is an economic NATO. Its much-derided officials keep us from harm while we work, just as our soldiers keep us from harm while we sleep.
In conclusion, I echo the countless questions being asked tonight in families and businesses up and down the country. Will there be an end to present financial uncertainty—Aviva’s decision today is a case in point—or is this merely phase 1? Are our mortgages, savings and pensions safe? Who is going to invest in all those UK businesses exporting to Europe? What is Parliament’s ultimate role in our leaving the EU? What is to become of London’s special financial status? What about the Brits living abroad? Can our farming communities remain robust? Will our young people’s opportunities expand or contract? Will those workers and their families from Europe who are here now be able to stay? Like many noble Lords, I most certainly hope that they will be.
As the daughter of an unskilled Irish immigrant who remembered those signs on the windows of boarding houses in the 1950s, “No blacks, no Irish, no dogs”, I feel particularly aggrieved at the whipping up of fear over immigration during the campaign. I hope that in the coming months we will take a calm, collective deep breath before rushing headlong into Brexit and get the very best deal possible for this country after the deluge. That will take leadership, which is lacking today in the Government and, certainly, in Her Majesty’s loyal Opposition, but I hope that I shall still be around to see a future Labour Government take us back into Europe—a Europe and a UK no doubt chastened and reformed by this searing experience.
Syria: UK Military Action
Baroness Crawley Excerpts(8 years, 11 months ago)
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Baroness Crawley (Lab)
My Lords, I add my congratulations to the noble Lord, Lord Hague of Richmond, on his stunning maiden speech. We are all going to have to up our game.
Had we been voting on the Government’s Motion tonight, I would have voted in favour of the Government’s position to extend military air strikes into Syria. Like many noble Lords whose views and judgments I respect and who may not agree with me, I have not come to this conclusion lightly. Despite being a Government Defence Whip between 2002 and 2010, I am not someone who believes that military intervention is always the answer to global conflict; it often is not. But in this instance, to degrade the murderous activities of Daesh in Syria, and to make our own citizens safer from its murderous intent, I believe that we have no other serious option.
I cannot see the logic of agreeing to air strikes against Daesh in Iraq—which we have been carrying out fairly effectively for the past 14 months—where it is less prominent, and not agreeing to allow the RAF to cross a border that, as noble Lords have said, Daesh does not recognise, to where Daesh is headquartered and where its communications network is based. If we are to stop this death cult, as many of my Muslim friends call it, from poisoning the minds of our young people here in Britain, and to degrade as much of their communications and ordnance as possible, it is a no-brainer. I have reached this conclusion, too, on the basis that my party set out a number of conditions, as my noble friend Lord Rooker said, for extending the current air strike programme, and it is my belief that those conditions are now being met: blocking where we can the vast financial and economic aid to Daesh; convening the Vienna peace talks; the further significant pledge of humanitarian and restoration aid to the Syrian people; and, most significantly of all, the unanimous vote of the UN Security Council two weeks ago, calling on all of us to take action against ISIL/Daesh. There are those who say that it was not the right kind of UN Security Council resolution and we should wait for another to come along. Respectfully, I say, tell that to the Yazidi women and children enslaved, raped and executed as we speak by Daesh. Tell it to the hunted gay community in that region, and to the journalists and aid workers who have been murdered in front of Daesh cameras for all the world to see. If not now, when?
There are, of course, many serious questions remaining, the most obvious being the nature and scale of the ground troops needed to complete this operation. Could the Minister address the question of ground troops in his summing up? Even with such outstanding questions, I do not believe that they negate the need to begin inflicting serious damage on Daesh. On these Benches, we pride ourselves on being an internationalist party, and our sister party in France has asked for our solidarity, following the dreadful attacks on Paris last month. What are we to do—ignore them? Yes, Paris means a lot to us, but not that much. I was proud of my grandson singing the Marseillaise at Wembley, although he did mention to me how fierce the lyrics were.
Finally, our solidarity needs to continue to embrace the Syrian people, who simply want the peaceful, democratic, boring, quiet lives that we all take for granted. Air strikes in co-operation with the international coalition will not be the full answer—we all know that. But they are part of the answer if the Syrians are ever to have their homeland returned to them, and if we are ever to be free of—
